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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2024
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That is naive. People will still fight for power and exploit others to get it.
That is cynical. Been hearing this all my life as an excuse for why we can't have nice things. If you don't try, you don't get.
Well, while Marx does call for a "winnowing of the State" after the workers seize the means, a problem we saw, in countries such as the USSR, once some of these revolutionaries got their hands on the levers of power, they found they rather liked it, and would not have let go willingly.
I maintain that the issue is that they keep trying to have someone like a president. That doesn't work. You need a council that has executive power, that way if one person starts getting corrupted, they can be winnowed out. If you really want it to work, you need to outlaw political parties from day one, and require that no one that wants to hold political office is eligible to do so.
So, more like a sortition system, like how most Western courts select people for jury duty. Now that I think about it, it probably could work. We have wonders of technology that were once the realm of science fiction. These technologies could be leveraged positively in a communist system, I believe. AI in particular could solve things like the Numbers Problem. In a moneyless society, resources are allocated according to what is most necessary. I once watched a video where a problem was asked of the viewer. The scenario is as follows:
You are now the leader of a communist country. All markets and prices and money have been abolished. You want to build a train between City A and City B. There is a mountain between the two cities. You have two options. Option 1: Build a tunnel through the mountain, and Option 2: Build the track around the mountain.
1 will require less steel, but will take more manpower, as you will need more engineers to design and construct the tunnel.
Option 2 will require less manpower, but far more steel. That steel may be needed for other things, like appliances, medical equipment, homes and hospitals.
So, how do you prioritize resources? How do you know what your fellow citizens value more as a society?
You could do a survey, but then you run into the Numbers Problem. Your country has a lot of people. That's a lot of survey responses. You'll need nearly all of the available manpower in your country to sort them all. But with AI, that might not be necessary. The algorithm could collect all the responses and then output solutions to resource allocation based on those responses. To do this would require a massive surveillance network, though. People would no longer have much in the way of privacy.
The answer is you want to build a train route through a mountain. You don't need it, thus we don't have to build it.
But the nation does need a robust transportation system for people and resources. Both people and things have places they need to go. What's your solution? Unless you can build Star Trek-style matter-energy transporters, rail and road are your best options.
I was under the impression that the nation state should be dissolved and everyone forms communes that reflect their values.
Direct democracy can work way better with smaller communities.
The problem is, you would need a large federation of these communes to band together to defeat a hostile nation state level threat.
The federation! Oh shit
The Soviet Union threatened my parents and grandparents lives. My country did try it, we decided against it. All the issues that capitalism has, communism still has. Add centralized power, and human exploitation is worse. Communism will not solve your problems.
Yeah, only privileged people from Western countries who never knew struggle dream about communism. No one who went through communism will ever support that shit.
It had some of the same problems but not all of them. It had universal healthcare, better rights for women, faster increase of education and literacy, less homelessness, less problems with religion interfering with politics, or companies buying politicians, etc.
It also had some new problems we didn't have like lack of focus on small commodities or suppression of religion, but that's not fixable or required for communism, it's just a focus they had specifically. It also had of the same problems we have just from being human, like anti-LGBTQ attitudes, racism against certain groups, bureaucrats, and wars. But communism's implementation changes between countries, none of those problems are necessary, it's just stuff that has to be learned from. For example, Cuba is communist but has made great strides towards fixing LGBTQ and racist attitudes, and has eased up on religion. China is communist but has a bigger focus on small manufacturing and as a result has lots of small commodities.
Imagine if we abandoned democracy the first time it "failed" in Greece thousands of years ago or the republic in Rome. I don't doubt that you have some relatives that suffered, but by comparison, the US and it's capitalist allies destabilized basically all of South America and Africa. While most people who were alive in the former Soviet block would prefer to go back to when it existed because it caused a huge economic disaster when they sold the countries off for parts and privatized everything for the oligarchs.
The important part is that it's a system not focused on things like GDP, growth, or money made by corporations to determine success, but the happiness and well-being of all the humans as a collective. Just focusing on that would go a long way, no matter which implementation we used (but imo it probably has to be an implementation of socialism or communism, because capitalism can't imagine a society without those money and growth metrics).
We have universal healthcare and human rights everywhere in Europe. But we don't have authoritarian regimes which kill millions for ideology. Fuck communism!
You do, but you don't see it as that because the millions dying are in the Middle-East where you're getting your oil, Africa where you get your diamonds and coffee, South America where you get your minerals and oil, and Asia where they're assembling your manufacturing. And it took wars and imperialism and installed authoritarian puppet regimes to extract the wealth from all those places. Not to mention what do you think the monarchies of World War I and fascist regimes of World War 2 did? Give out puppies?
You guys are better than the US, but only because you're balanced by actual socialist and communist political parties and labor unions that are able to extract concessions like that universal healthcare. Looks like a few of those countries are turning fascist again, so just give it some time, and those human rights will be gone, too.
Lol ok
You can still bribe leaders in a communist system. Woman amd healthcare exist in lots of capalist systems.
Not even close to most. Make friends in Europe.
Don't I have the power over my happiness in capitalism because I can work towards higher wealth extraction to achieve my own goals?.
Sure you can bribe people, but it's a harder when the wealth isn't concentrated in a few people, and the companies are owned by the people instead of private interests. USSR politicians weren't known for being rich, but compare that to modern Russian oligarchs, or even US Congressmen. A majority of the US Congressman are millionaires, not at all true for the common populace.
I'm going off statistics and surveys, not anecdotal evidence.
http://thetrumpet.com/6322-eastern-germans-feel-life-was-better-under-communism
http://pewresearch.org/short-reads/2010/04/28/hungary-better-off-under-communism/
http://reason.com/2009/11/16/the-rise-of-communist-nostalgi/
http://voxukraine.org/en/the-strong-hand-curse-why-ukrainians-do-not-like-capitalism
http://balkaninsight.com/2010/11/24/macedonians-deem-communist-past-better-than-present/
http://themoscowtimes.com/2017/12/25/majority-of-russians-regret-soviet-collapse-poll-says-a60039
http://rt.com/news/ussr-collapse-mistake-poll-585/
If you're lucky, but you can't work your way to being billionaire without exploiting people on the way. So, chances are, no. Statistically you're probably one of the people having wealth extracted than the other way around unless you have a supportive network, friendly investors or parents loaning you money. If not, chances are you're making it harder for other people, either who work for you, work with you, act as a reserve army of labor, or are victims of your country's imperialism. It requires some people to suffer as part of the system, but that's not sustainable. There's a reason the US has a shrinking middle class, and a growing fascism problem, and economic crises every 10 years. The UK and Canada aren't far behind, with some groups trying to privatize their health services and such. Europe will be next, with the democratic socialist Scandinavian countries probably last. So it may seem fine where you live now, but give it some years and you'll be right where we are, with someone trying to sell off your health services or other state assets. I'd be willing to bet.
Mate, I was born in USSR, stop spreading lies.
This is what people don't seem to get. Human nature is when things are bad we band together, when things are good, we compete against each other. Capitalism leverages the latter while communism just tries to ignore that it exists.
Capitalism certainly has its flaws, but it's a far better starting point.
We tried many times, millions were killed each time.
I meant try for utopia. What you refer to isn't that.
It is exactly that. Otherwise Marx wouldn't praise the Taiping massacre, which led to tens of millions of deaths.
No shit. That’s why it’s a constant ongoing effort to build communism. The current system is leading us to certain annihilation.
Why wouldn't communism lead to cancer like growth? Wouldn't political leaders be incentivized by the masses for never ending quality of life improvements?
Money is not the problem, it's people. If replace the system, nothing changes. If we want sustainability, that needs to be desired by the masses, and that is achievable without communism.
Because once you reach a certain level, growth isn't required, you just divide the resources you have to give everyone a happy life. People don't need infinite money to be happy, but they do a need a minimum amount, studies have shown that. Capitalism denies that minimum amount to a lot of people because of its focus on accumulating and concentrating that wealth.
Who decides when growth isn't required?
The people probably.
So wouldnt a sugnificant number of people want more than they have?
“People” are not the problem. That’s Malthusian garbage. Capitalism is the problem.
Human beings use complex language and are capable of learning and developing culture.
Capitalism is a system that teaches and enforces greed, competition and exploitation. Capitalism is a system that demands infinite growth for the sake of growth. It’s nonsensical, and obvious that such a system leads to over-exploitation and collapse. We are currently the way we are because we’ve been forced to under this system.
We are capable of change, and learning to build communities and societies based on mutual aid, cooperation, and living in harmony with the world we live in.
If we start to build such communities we will learn to cooperate just as the capitalist system has taught us to be greedy and exploit each other for fear of ending up without the means to house and feed ourselves.
Why wouldn’t communism lead to cancer like growth? Because the objective isn’t endless expansion to make some imaginary line go up and hand over all the wealth to a small number of people. It’s to manage our world based on good science and achieving objectives that lead to a sustainable world in which all people’s basic needs are met.
There are countless ways of building communism, and all of them require constant work. And yes it’s true that if implemented in an authoritarian manner it would lead to a bad outcome (still not as bad as our certain extinction under any capitalist system). Anarchism (and there are many schools of thought within anarchism) gives us many tools to build communism in a libertarian manner where we keep each other in check, ensuring that no one person gains power over others.
Look at Rojava, revolutionary Catalonia, the Ukrainian Free Territory, the Shinmin Autonomous Region. These societies can work, expanded, and built upon if given half a chance.